Best Supermarket Companies To Buy Right Now

Best Supermarket Companies To Buy Right Now: LHC Group Inc (LHCG)

LHC Group, Inc. (LHC Group), incorporated on January 1, 2005, provides post-acute health care services to patients through its home nursing agencies, hospices and long-term acute care hospitals (LTACHs). As of December 31, 2012, through the Company's wholly- and majority-owned subsidiaries, equity joint ventures and controlled affiliates, the Company operated in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington. The Company operates in two segments: home-based services and facility-based services. As of December 31, 2012, the Company owned and operated 274 home-based service locations, with 232 home nursing agency locations, 32 hospices, three specialty agencies and four private duty agencies. In February 2014, LHC Group Inc acquired two home health providers.

As of December 31, 2012, the Company also managed the oper ations of three home nursing agencies in which the Company does not have an ownership interest. The Company's facility-based services included six long-term acute care hospitals with nine locations, a pharmacy, and a family health center. The Company provides home-based post-acute health care services through its home nursing agencies and hospices. The Company's home nursing locations offer a wide range of services, including skilled nursing, medically-oriented social services and physical, occupational and speech therapy. The nurses, home health aides and therapists in the Company's home nursing agencies work closely with patients and their families to design and implement individualized treatments in accordance with a physician-prescribed plan of care.

The Company's hospices provide end-of-life care to patients with terminal illnesses through interdis! ciplinary teams of physicians, nurses, home health aides, counselors and volunteers. Of the 274 home-based ser vices locations, 140 are wholly-owned by the Company, 124 ar! e majority-owned or controlled by the Company through joint ventures, seven are operated through license lease arrangements, and the Company manages the operations of three home nursing agencies in which the Company has no ownership interest.

The Company's LTACH locations provide services primarily to patients with complex medical conditions who have transitioned out of a hospital intensive care unit but whose conditions remain too severe for treatment in a non-acute setting. As of December 31, 2012, the Company's LTACHs had 220 licensed beds. Of the Company's 11 facility-based services locations, six are wholly-owned by the Company and five are majority-owned or controlled by the Company through joint ventures.

Home-Based Services

The Company's registered and licensed practical nurses provide a range of medically necessary services to homebound patients who are suffering from acute or chronic illness, recovering from injury or surgery, or w ho otherwise require care, teaching or monitoring. These services include wound care and dressing changes; cardiac rehabilitation; infusion therapy; pain management; pharmaceutical administration; skilled observation and assessment, and patient education. It has also designed guidelines to treat chronic diseases and conditions, including diabetes, hypertension, arthritis, Alzheimer's disease, low vision, spinal stenosis, Parkinson's disease, osteoporosis, complex wound care and chronic pain. Its home health aides provide assistance with daily living activities, such as light housekeeping, simple meal preparation, medication management, bathing and walking. Through its medical social workers, it counsels patients and their families with regard to financial, personal and social concerns that arise from a patient's health-related problems.

The! Company ! provides skilled nursing, ventilator and tracheotomy services, extended care specialties, medication adminis tration and management, and patient and family assistance an! d educati! on. It also provides management services to third-party home nursing agencies, often as an interim solution until proper state and regulatory approvals for an acquisition can be obtained. The Company's physical, occupational and speech therapists provide therapy services to patients in their home. Its therapists coordinate multi-disciplinary treatment plans with physicians, nurses and social workers to restore basic mobility skills, such as getting out of bed and walking safely with crutches or a walker Its therapists assist patients and their families with improving and maintaining a patient's ability to perform functional activities of daily living, such as the ability to dress, cook, clean and manage other activities safely in the home environment. Its speech and language therapists provide corrective and rehabilitative treatment to patients who suffer from physical or cognitive deficits or disorders that create difficulty with verbal communication or swallowing.

All of the Company's home nursing agencies offer 24-hour personal emergency response and support services through Philips Lifeline (Lifeline) for qualified patients who require close medical monitoring but who want to maintain an independent lifestyle. These services consist principally of a communicator that connects to the telephone line in the subscriber's home and a personal help button that is worn or carried by the individual subscriber which, when activated, initiates a telephone call from the subscriber's communicator to Lifeline's central monitoring facilities. Lifeline's trained personnel identify the nature and extent of the subscriber's particular need and notify the subscriber's family members, neighbors and/or emergency personnel, as needed.

The Company's Medicare-certified hospice operations provi! de a rang! e of hospice services designed to meet the individual physical, spiritual and psychosocial needs of terminally ill pa tients and their families. Its hospice services are primaril! y provide! d in a patient's home but can also be provided in a nursing home, assisted living facility or hospital. Key services provided include pain and symptom management accompanied by palliative medication, emotional and spiritual support, spiritual counseling and family bereavement counseling, inpatient and respite care, homemaker services, dietary counseling and social worker visits for up to 13 months after a patient's death.

Facility-Based Services

The Company's LTACHs treat patients with severe medical conditions who require a care and frequent monitoring by physicians and other clinical personnel. Patients who receive its services in an LTACH are too medically unstable to be treated in a non-acute setting. It also treats patients diagnosed with musculoskeletal impairments that restrict their ability to perform normal activities of daily living. As part of its facility-based services, the Company operates an institutional pharmacy, which focuses on pr oviding a full array of services to its long-term acute care hospitals. All coding, medical records, case management, utilization review and medical staff credentialing are provided at the hospital level. Centralized functions that are provided by the home office include payroll, accounting, financial reporting, billing, collections, regulatory and legal compliance, risk management, pharmacy, information technology and general clinical oversight accomplished by periodic on-site surveys.

Advisors' Opinion:

• [By Sean Williams]

  What: Shares of home health providers Amedisys (NASDAQ: AMED  ) , Gentiva Health Services (NASDAQ: GTIV  ) , and LHC Group (NASDAQ: LHCG  )  swooned as much as 28%, 20%, and 15%, respectively, following a public proposal by the Centers for Medicare and Medi! caid Serv! ices, or CMS, late yesterday that in-home health care reimbursements be cut by 1.5% in 2014.

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